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Nuclear setback

8 May 1999

Japan’s plans to build a nuclear reprocessing plant have been delayed. The
project was due to start in the northern town of Rokkasho in January 2003. But
recent problems in the nuclear industry, including a fire at a nuclear storage
plant at Tokaimura near Tokyo in 1997, have forced its postponement.

Japan plans to use the reprocessing plant to extract plutonium from spent
nuclear fuel as part of its long-term goal of burning plutonium in fast breeder
reactors. But accidents have made the public deeply suspicious about the
programme. This is the fifth postponement, and construction is now due to start
in July 2005.